The BSA has released its annual report on software piracy around the world. …

Share this story

It's May, that glorious time of year when spring bursts into full flower, the scents and sounds of summer are just around the corner, and when the Business Software Alliance (BSA) shovels (PDF) out its annual global software piracy results. Piracy rates fell slightly in a number of countries, including virtually all of the ones displayed below. This change is mirrored across the BSA's list, as only a bare handful of countries report even a tiny gain in piracy rate, but this doesn't stop the BSA from claiming worldwide piracy rose by four percent. If the BSA's math seems off to you, read on.

The BSA divides the world into six zones: Asia-Pacific, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, North America, and Western Europe. The Asia-Pacific group contains 17 individual countries and one undefined "other" category. In 13 of these nations, piracy rates from 2006 to 2007 fell by one to three percent. In the remaining four countries, the piracy rate did not change from 2006 to 2007.

The 18th "other" category accounted for a miniscule $69 million of pirated software out of the $14 billion-plus the BSA estimates was lost in the AP region. "Other" piracy rates rose from 86 percent in 2006 to 91 percent in 2007. As for the total piracy rate in the Asia-Pacific region, the BSA states that it rose by 4 percent, apparently entirely on the strength of a five percent rise in an undefined category that accounted for 0.49 percent of the total dollar value of the "losses" in the region.

Data source: BSA

How the BSA arrives at such figures is murky, at best, and the explanations it does give for how it conducts its yearly survey utilize the same flawed methodology we've covered on numerous occasions. Piracy rates are still calculated by estimating the total amount of software deployed in a market, subtracting the amount of software sold in the same area over the same period, and slapping a big "Piracy losses" label on the difference.

As we noted last year, virtually all of the numbers that plug into these various formulas are based on estimates, not hard data, and the BSA makes no attempt whatsoever to adjust for the software packages that would not be sold if piracy was not an option. In the Business Software Alliance's world, ten pirated copies of Microsoft Office automatically equate to 10 legitimate copies of Microsoft Office regardless of whether or not OSS options are available.

The real news here, despite the BSA's best attempts to hide it, is the steadily falling piracy rates across any number of nations in the world. The handful of nations that did show gains are more than outweighed by the majority where piracy rates either held steady or fell. "Nations of the world combat piracy" isn't nearly as strong of a headline as "Piracy rates continue to rise on strength of P2P leeches," however, and it wouldn't be the first time the BSA has been accused of distorting its data to serve a personal agenda.